Software Discovery

In an effort to minimise pre-requisites, software may remain de-centralised and unbound by configuration files. Traditionally, software belongs to the IT domain and is typically installed in a common location which is then addressable via your tools.

from FTrack's apps.xml

<application>
	<platform>win32</platform>
    <name>Maya201{0}</name>
    <icon>C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya201{0}\icons\mayaico.png</icon>
    <location>C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya201{0}\bin\maya.exe</location>
    <include>PySideMayaWin64</include>
    <include>ftrackMayaPlugin</include>
    <replace>2-3</replace>
</application>

Pipi Application Configuration

# Vertical bar (|) = <resource>|<metadata>
/projects/spiderman|apps/maya-2014x64/
/projects/spiderman|apps/maya-2014x64/environment/PYTHONPATH
/projects/spiderman|apps/maya-2014x64/args/-hideConsole
/projects/spiderman|apps/maya-2014x64/icon/maya.png

Though you are advised to allow IT to do their job, in an effort to get up and running quickly and without reliance on a third-party, Pipi offers you the alternative to handle software and their individual locations across an organisation in a per-workstation fashion; without affecting the accessibility of tools depending on their physical location - such as launcher-style applications.

See Tutorial

Customisations

Running software with pre-defined requirements is essential to any production. In an effort to make each application context-aware, customisations may take place at any level of your organisation - either per resource or identity, such as user or department. Each tool may then depend on customisations without relying on a central source such as a database or configuration file.

Customisations include:

• Software per resource
• Version per resource
• Flags per software, per resource
• Environment per software, per resource
• Variable substitution/expansion

See Tutorial